Kafka's Work Research Articles

A History of Critical Writing on Franz Kafka

When Kafka died, the German periodical Die Schbine Literatur contained this short notice: Franz Kafka died in a sanatorium in lower Austria, aged forty-one, after a long illness. He belonged to the Prague literary circle of Max Brod. A number of stories have appeared by him. At the time of his death, Kafka's work was known to only a small circle of Czech and German writers, among them Werfel, Max Brod, Oskar Baum, Rudolf Fuchs, Heinz Politzer, John Urzidil, and Ernst Weiss. Max Brod was perhaps Kafka's most intimate friend. After Kafka's death, Brod found two notes addressed to him requesting that he burn unread and to the last page everything his friend had left on paper exception, so far as it can be got hold of, or begged from the addressees . . . and be sure not to forget the notebooks, . .. all this, without exception . . . and that you should do it as soon as possible is what I beg of you.2 Brod did not honor his friend's last wish for understandable reasons. Instead he edited for publication everything he could find by Kafka, including Kafka's three unfinished novels The Trial, The Castle and America. Thus Brod was responsible for preserving Kafka's work and for bringing it to the attention of an increasingly larger literary audience. Kafka readers are greatly indebted for Brod's untiring efforts as Kafka's literary executor. Kafka met Max Brod in 1902 when Kafka was nineteen and attending the German University at Prague. From that date until Kafka's death the two were intimate friends. Brod discov-